Clare combat stronger force

The warrior spirit is still alive in Clare, but Kilkenny have as much class as Waterford. By Denis Walsh

ON THE morning after the Clare-Kilkenny League match in March there was a newspaper photograph which recorded perfectly the temperature in Cusack Park that day. The Kilkenny centre fielder Paddy Mullally is on his way to the floor with a look of pained anguish on his face and Ollie Baker is standing inches away, unable to deny that he was at the scene. “Both were shown the yellow card,” read the caption, before adding with devastating understatement, “and Mullally took no further part in the game.”

Mullally had thrown Baker’s hurley out over the sideline, which is the kind of provocative act you wouldn’t expect in a League match. But there were six yellow cards flashed that day and it wasn’t your typical League match: “A good few of the exchanges could be categorised as X-rated,” reported the Irish Times, “and Kilkenny had to be up for this if they